Confectionary food bars have become a popular consumer choice for a variety of reasons. One reason for their popularity is that food bars are frequently used as a nutrition source for people “on the go” who don't have time for a meal. Another reason is that high protein food bars are used by athletes to enhance athletic performance and to help build body mass. Furthermore, dieters often use food bars as low calorie “meal replacers” in weight loss programs. As a result, the food bar industry has grown tremendously in the past ten years.
Confectionary food bars are also utilized to obtain health benefits, such as lower total blood cholesterol concentrations. Confectionary food bars are typically formulated to contain protein, carbohydrates, and flavorings. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recognized soy protein as useful for lowering blood cholesterol concentrations, therefore, soy protein is utilized as a preferred protein material in food bars to formulate health promoting food bars. Health promoting food bars must include relatively high levels of soy protein in the food bar formulation in order to be useful as “health promoting”. Typical health promoting food bars contain from 20% to 45% soy protein, by weight.
Inclusion of high levels of protein in a food bar, however, negatively affects the texture, palatability, and shelf-life of the food bar relative to food bars containing less protein and more carbohydrates. High protein levels, e.g. 20% to 45% by weight, in a food bar cause the bar to become texturally hard and bricklike. As a result, the food bar is unpalatable to a consumer since it is hard to chew.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,299,929 discloses bars which partially overcome the disadvantages of confectionary food bars containing high levels of protein. These bars utilize a proteinaceous material having low water absorption properties and medium to high emulsification properties in combination with a carbohydrate material to form chewy food bars having a protein to carbohydrate weight ratio of greater than 1. The critical feature of the proteinaceous material that provides the desired chewiness is a dissociation between water hydration properties of the proteinaceous material and other functional characteristics of the proteinaceous material. The proteinaceous material used in the food bars is preferably a mixture of “binding” proteins having low water absorption, medium to high emulsification properties, and low to medium viscosity and denatured “filler” proteins having low functionality, in particular, low water absorption and low viscosity. The limiting amounts of binding protein and filler protein relative to each other are 100% binding protein:0% filler protein to 100% filler protein:0% binding protein, where the relative amounts of each type of protein are selected on the basis of flavor, price, availability, and nutrition.
It is desirable, however, to provide new soft and palatable confectionary food bars having high levels of protein. It is further desirable to provide such soft confectionary food bars where the food bars have an extended shelf life in which they maintain their softness over an extended period of time. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel soft confectionary food bar containing high levels of protein, where the novel high protein food bar has an extended shelf-life for maintaining its softness.